With some persuasion, however, there being but small difference in the value of the cloths, the one being a west of England bottle-green, and the other a Manchester blue, I caused them to niffer, and hushed up the business, which, had they been obstreperous, would have made half the parish of Dalkeith stand on end.
After poor Mungo had been beneath the mools, I daresay a good month, Benjie, as he was one forenoon diverting himself dozing his top in the room where they sleeped, happened to drive it in below the bed, where, scrambling in on his hands and feet, he found a half sheet of paper written over in Mungo's hand-writing, the which he brought to me; and, on looking over it, I found it jingled in metre like the Psalms of David.
Having no skeel in these matters, I sent up the close for James Batter, who, being a member of the fifteenpence a-quarter subscription book-club, had read a power of all sorts of things, sacred and profane.

James, as he was humming it over with his specs on his beak, gave now and then a thump on his thigh, "Prime, prime, man; fine, prime, good, capital!" and so on, which astonished me much, kenning who had written it--a callant that had sleeped with our Benjie, and could not have shaped a pair of leggins though we had offered him the crown of the three kingdoms.
Seeing what it was thought of by one who knew what was what, and could distinguish the difference between a B and a bull's foot, I judged it necessary for me to take a copy of it; which, for the benefit of them that like poems, I do not scruple to tag to the tail of this chapter.
Oh, wad that my time were ower but, Wi' this wintry sleet and snaw, That I might see our house again I' the bonny birken shaw!-- For this is no my ain life, And I peak and pine away Wi' the thochts o' hame, and the young flow'rs I' the glad green month o' May.
I used to wauk in the morning Wi' the loud sang o' the lark, And the whistling o' the ploughmen lads As they gaed to their wark; I used to weir in the young lambs Frae the tod and the roaring stream; But the warld is changed, and a' thing now To me seems like a dream.
There are busy crowds around me On ilka lang dull street; Yet, though sae mony surround me, I kenna ane I meet.
And I think on kind, kent faces, And o' blythe and cheery days, When I wander'd out, wi' our ain folk, Out-owre the simmer braes.
Wae's me, for my heart is breaking! I think on my brithers sma', And on my sister greeting, When I came frae hame awa; And oh! how my mither sobbit, As she shook me by the hand; When I left the door o' our auld house, To come to this stranger land; There's nae place like our ain hame; Oh, I wish that I was there!-- There's nae hame like our ain hame To be met wi' ony where!-- And oh! that I were back again To our farm and fields so green; And heard the tongues o' my ain folk, And was what I hae been! That's poor Mungo's poem; which I and James Batter, and the rest, think excellent, and not far short of Robert Burns himself, had he been spared.
Some may judge otherwise, out of bad taste or ill nature; but I would just thank them to write a better at their leisure..